Tahsis is a community on the west coast of Vancouver Island at the head of Tahsis Inlet which is the northern arm of Nootka Sound, about 50 miles (80 km) south-southeast of Port McNeill and 30 miles (48 km) west-northwest of Gold River, British Columbia. The name is from the Nuu-chah-nulth language word ‘tashees’, meaning ‘passage or gateway’. Tahsis Inlet is a fjord that extends north for 17 miles (27 km) and is protected from Pacific storms by the surrounding topography. The community is in the floodplain of the Tahsis River that starts from an elevation of 3,900 feet (1,189 m) and flows generally south for 8 miles (13 km) to Tahsis Inlet, draining a watershed of 19,275 acres (7,800 ha). The watershed is formed by rocks representing the Wrangellia terrane and consist mainly of the Vancouver and Bonanza Groups. The Vancouver Group rocks are Late Triassic basaltic volcanics of the Karmutsen Formation overlain by sediments of the Quatsino and Parson’s Bay Formations. The Bonanza Group rocks are an Early Jurassic sequence of basaltic to dacitic volcanics. The area experienced two igneous intrusions during the Early Jurassic age resulting in granitic batholiths called the Island Intrusions, and the Catface Intrusions of a general quartz dioritic composition.
Tahsis Inlet is the traditional territory of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nations, a Nuu-chah-nulth peoples who had a winter village at the mouth of the Tahsis River. In 1778, Captain James Cook first encountered Nuu-chah-nulth villagers at the entrance to Nootka Sound who reputedly tried to direct his ships by shouting ‘nuutkaa’, meaning ‘come around’ into a sheltered harbor. Cook interpreted this as their name for the inlet, which was subsequently charted as Nootka Sound. The Nuu-chah-nulth, a word meaning ‘all along the mountains and sea’, were hunter-gatherers, who subsisted primarily on salmon, marine mammals, and shellfish. Hunting parties travelled in large canoes during the winter and spring, to and from inlets and camps where they fished and hunted before returning home. Cook assumed that all the Nuu-chah-nulth were part of the same tribe, and although the Nuu-chah-nulth shared traditions, languages and aspects of culture, they were divided into 14 separate nations with each led by a hereditary chief who controlled the subsistence resources within their territory.
The village of Tahsis originated as a floating logging camp at the river mouth in the 1930s operated by Nootka Wood Products Limited. The site faced south and benefited from maximum sunlight in the narrow fjord and had relatively easy access to deep water for ocean-going vessels. In 1945, the Gibson Brothers built a mill, but it burned down in 1948. The next year, Gibson Mills and the East Asiatic Company formed a partnership called the Tahsis Company Ltd., and a new mill was constructed. In 1982, Tahsis Company operated a medium-sized forest operation with two sawmills, a pulpmill, and deep water dock. The annual log production was 1.6 million cubic meters, with 84 percent of the timber supply based on sustained yield, and 16 percent of the logs from temporary tenures. In 2001, the mills, then owned by Canadian Pacific Forest Products, were closed and removed. Today, the mill properties are owned by Western Forest Products. In 2021, the village of Tahsis and Western Forest Products signed a Letter of Understanding to save the McKelvie Creek watershed from logging. The creek is a major tributary of the Tahsis River and supports the last old-growth forest in the community watershed. Read more here and here. Explore more of Tahsis and Tahsis Inlet here:
